Shane Burkhart was an assistant under Joe Luce when the two helped Marion High School reach the Class 4A boys' basketball state championship game in 2008.

This winter, Burkhart will enter his 10th year as Bosse’s head basketball coach with hopes of leading the Bulldogs to a 3A state title.

And another mini goal that’s not necessarily in his control is now on his radar: having his team assigned to play a 3A semistate at Richmond’s Tiernan Center.

None of that would be possible without a man named Larry Cochren, who gave Burkhart his first big break at head coaching.

A year after helping Marion reach the state title game, it was Cochren who hired Burkhart at Bosse with no prior head coaching experience.

Cochren, after 14 years at Bosse and a lifetime in different sports administration roles, made the move to become Richmond’s new athletic director on June 14.

“We’ve still been in a transition of when I was going back and forth to Evansville every weekend. Just trying to get settled in, but as far as the school, the coaches, the administrators that I work for have made my transition a lot easier.”

It’s a hard move not just for Cochren, but also for people like Burkhart, and others who built relationships with him over the last 14 years at Bosse.

But Cochren is a man who likes his challenges, and he was up for a new one at Richmond.

“He took a chance on me when I had no varsity coaching experience and we were able to do something down here to this program that hadn’t been done in a decade,” said Burkhart, who has won five sectionals, three regionals and a semistate title with Bosse.

“He’s been just as much a part of what I do (as) my assistant coaches and my coaches.”

Making the move

As successful as Cochren was in tennis, he said his biggest enjoyment came from coaching his two sons, Jonathan and Cameron, in Little League baseball.

The two are nearing the ends of their academic careers at the University of Southern Indiana, which made the move for him and Sheila – and their dog Buster – a little easier.

But any move is hard, especially one that takes you about four hours from a place you’ve called home for 14 years.

Larry and Sheila spent about four weekends going to and from Evansville in moving, selling their house and saying goodbyes.

They didn’t expect to sell their house as quickly as they did, so they’re living in an apartment for the first time since the early 1990s, and Sheila, a registered nurse, hasn’t started looking for a job.

“It’s tough when you leave a place like that, when you’ve been there a long time; it’s difficult,” Cochren said. “I think I caught a lot of my colleagues off guard in Southern Indiana. Sometimes you’re at a place for a while and people don’t want to change. People stay comfortable in their environments, I could’ve stayed for as long as I wanted to down there, and I think when I absolutely was a little bit back and forth about making the move.

“But at the end of the day, me and my wife felt like that it was something that we both wanted to look at, take an adventure and go for a change and see how it goes.

Saying – or not saying – goodbye

Cochren said leaving Bosse surprised many people he’d worked with, but Burkhart and assistant athletic director Dave Collins had close relationships with him.

Collins was his assistant for all 14 years at Bosse, and the two spent their fair share of car rides together.

Getting his first big break from Cochren also meant he and Burkhart would build a strong relationship over the years.

In Burkhart’s recollection, it was impossible for the two to officially say goodbye.

“All moves are hard and all scenarios of moves are hard, for he and I, we really never said goodbye to each other,” Burkhart said. “We said ‘goodbye,’ but we never really could be in the same room together to say goodbye, because it became so emotional.

“After about the second week, he would walk by and I’d kind of put my head down. We didn’t necessarily want to get into that emotional stature again. He’d walk by and I’d kind of be like, ‘Hey, at some point in time, we got to talk,’ and he’d say, ‘No we don’t. No we don’t, we’re good.’”

Eventually, the time came. Burkhart was one of the few people who knew Cochren had applied for the job at Richmond. He knew Cochren was a great candidate, but he wasn't sure how he would say goodbye.

A new challenge

Leaving Bosse meant leaving the possibility of watching Burkhart and the Bulldogs make a run at the state championship.

The Bulldogs went 20-8 a year ago, and won a second straight regional title. In 2016, they fell to Marion in the Class 3A state title game.

Meanwhile, Richmond’s boys basketball team is coming off a 2-23 year – which included six forfeited victories – and the football team went 4-6 for its first losing season in six years.

But don’t tell Cochren that Richmond athletics are down.

“I expect Bosse to do great things down there, they’ve got a great coach down there that’s originally from Marion, he does a wonderful job with those kids, but running an athletic department, it’s not just about basketball,” Cochren said.

The resume

Cochren’s accomplishments are impressive. He was named the Indiana Interscholastic Athletic Administration Association Athletic Director of the Year in District 6 twice, in 2012 and 2017, and was named the Charles F. Maas Distinguished Service Award for District 6 in 2015, and the Charles F. Mass State of Indiana Distinguished Service award that same year.

He was the Bosse High School Educator of the Year in 2007 and was named the Fort Wayne “Home Town Hero” for work with children in District 10 Little League.

Cochren was inducted into the University of Charleston Hall of Fame in West Virginia, where he served as sports information director and varsity tennis coach.

Growing up, he played tennis, basketball and baseball at Southridge High School in Huntingburg, before going on to play tennis at Vincennes University, then at Charleston. Cochren spent nine or 10 years coaching college tennis, then was a tennis teaching pro for 13 years, before getting into coaching and high school.

“I went to Evansville thinking, ‘We’ll do this for five or six years, we’ll see what comes about,’ but it was 14 very, very good years, and I just was looking to challenge myself some more,” Cochren said.

“I think in any profession sometimes you try to better yourself, and the way to do that is taking on some new challenges.”

He found that at Richmond.

Moving on at Bosse

Collins starts his 15th year at Bosse. He and Cochren entered the administrative positions together. Burkhart starts Year No. 10, and his first without Cochren as his boss.

His absence is felt. But Cochren’s mark on Bulldog athletics will never leave.

“I think every day, there’s something about Larry that we say in situations,” Collins said.

There is an opportunity, with Richmond as a semistate host site, that the Bulldogs could play at Tiernan Center. And for Burkhart, he would love nothing else than to share a possibly historic moment with his former mentor.

“I’d love that,” Burkhart said. “If we get to come to Richmond and play in front of Larry and I get to be in that scenario with one game away from state, and I get to share that moment with him, it would be something that I cherish.

“You will learn to absolutely adore what he does for kids and what he does for programs.”